:: welcome

That's a question akin to "where do babies come from" in that many have tried and failed explaining it without making it sound absolutely ridiculous.

Demos are the things that happen when people who are interested in computers sit down together and make something fun and spectacular and challenging to program. They work on it until it becomes a final work of art, then they pack up their sleeping bags and travel to a demoparty where they enter it to a competition. That's pretty much the gist of it.

:: welcome :: I'm cautiously interested, where can I read more ?

You probably have the Wikipedia article open already at this point so we might as well skip that: There's been books and films made about the subject, as well as of course other websites like demoscene.info, but perhaps all you need is to check some more demos from this site to understand - the mileage varies for everyone.

:: demos

:: demos :: Where to get missing *.dll's for a Windows demo?

Get the D3DX_*.dll's here.
You can probably download them from the web somewhere too, but that's generally less recommended. (See also: Accepting candy from a stranger.)

Please note that while these emulators are free to download, some may require copyrighted ROM images to run.

:: demos :: I just downloaded a demo/intro and my virus scanner flagged it! Is that serious?

Probably not.

See, the way it works is that most 64k or 4k intros on Windows use a technique called "executable compression" to decrease their filesize and fit into the sizelimit. This is a very similar technique to what malware often uses to evade detection, so some of the protection tools might automatically flag such compression as suspicious.

Intros on Pouët (especially the ones hosted on Scene.org) can be considered 99% clean - if you use common sense you can realize that most intros are simply too small to contain common malware.

:: demos :: A demo crashes on my computer! What do I do?

First, in the case of PC demos, always try to make sure that your computer is up to speed: Most modern demos require fairly decent hardware - if you can't run recent games on your computer, then you might end up having problems with demos too.

Now that being said: Demos generally don't go through the same QA process as commercial software products do, given that most of them are potentially finished in a drunken haze 2 hours after a deadline in a nondescript unheated community house in a foreign country. It is entirely possible that the reason why a demo crashes on your computer is simply a result of a small typo or a quick oversight.

What we suggest is you contact the creator of the prod (you can usually find their contact details in the nfo) a few days after the party has ended, and ask them if they need any help fixing the issue.

:: demos :: I want to use a demo in my music video / installation / art project / etc.! Can I?

Short version. generally speaking: no, not without the explicit consent of the authors.

See, demos are freely distributable, and they often come without a specific software license, but that doesn't mean the authors don't give up their copyright, which the Berne Convention in 1886 on established to be automatic on any work. This means that while you can watch demos as much as you want and send them to your friends, the permission to make derivative works is not implied.

There is of course a solution: Contact the authors. Most demos come with some sort of contact information as far as the authors go, and sending them an email costs you nothing. Chances are, with proper credit given, they will agree. Failure to do so runs the risk of getting found out, which usually ends up resulting in very very bad PR.

There are of course some demos that come with a specific explicit license such as Creative Commons, and you can use the content of those demos under the terms of that license - it is still common courtesy, however, to contact the authors and letting them know.

:: general

:: general :: I spotted a mistake, how do I edit a prod ?

Editing a production is reserved for moderators and glöperators only.
If you find a mistake or missing information on a submitted prod, just click the link at the bottom of the prod page, and fill out the form - the glöperators will take care of the rest.

:: general :: what is a coup de coeur ?

a coup de coeur is a french expression a bit hard to explain in english, at least for me ^^;
in the pouët.net case, just think of it like a kickass but not well known prod.

from LoOpInG_:
A coup de coeur it's like when you see a tv series/read a book/play
a game/etc. for the first time and you really like it even if it's
not the best series/book/game/etc. you have seen...

:: general :: how much $$$ are 100 glöps worth ?

it depends, if you bring your glöps to your local bank, I don't think they'll give you anything.
but as you can't buy glöps with real money, they can be worth pretty much ! what's the price of being in the top 10 ? huh ?

anyway, maybe later, you'll get free stuff when you'll get enough glöps like for exemple a t-shirt at 100 glöps, a gus at 1000, an inflatable doll at 10000, and a life at 100000, because you'll seriously need one.

:: general :: how does the popularity rating work?

popularity is based (but not only) on the number of times a prod is shown on pouët.net
the more a prod gets visits, the more it gets popularity.
so if you want your prod to get more popularity, just link its pouët.net page on your website for example.

of course cheating is not allowed (hidden-links, robots, ...).

:: general :: i want to ignore this %$#$%#%$ troll! why won't you code an ignore certain user feature?

We won't because web standards can get the job done easily. The cite attribute is set in the HTML markup with the userId of the person who posted this of that message. Therefore, any standards compliant browser can use this attribute and help you to filter the messages. To do so you simply have to create a set of custom CSS rules.

Imagine you want to hide all messages from the users 314159 and 271828, your custom CSS rules would be:

div[class="cite-314159"],
div[class="cite-271828"]
{
display:none;
}

This example is dead simple, and CSS allows much more customization. For instance it's possible to :

display the picture of a troll behind the messages of given users,

use an adjacent selector to show only the second line of given users to show their name in the comments but keep their foolish messages hidden,

highlight the messages of your friends,

highlight the messages of the members of your group,

highlight the messages of Pouet's moderators,

...

As you can see the possibilities can really enhance the legibility of Pouet.

Notice that to avoid any possible conflict with other sites using the cite attribute in a similar way, it may be worth using the URIid Firefox extension that will add an id based on the domain name to the BODY tag. In the end, the cutsom CSS in the example would be:

Further more, now, thanks to the FireFox extension called GreaseMonkey, it's possible to make a site specific user script. So here comes Pouet 'attention whores' toggle created by our beloved p01. All you have to do is to open that script in FireFox, go to Tools > Install User Script, reload Pouet and enjoy. A little trumpet should appear in the top left corner. The usage of the script is straight forward. And the infos are maintained in a cookie.

pouet.net uses sceneID service from scene.org, so if you registered with a valid email, to retrieve a new password all you have to do is go here!
if your email has gone bad, you'll have to contact sceneID telling them what's your sceneID username and what's your current valid email.

:: general :: how come certain users have pcdc's and i don't?

To reward the users for their work on the pouët productions database, each user is allowed to enter a prod-id as their personal coup de coeur every time you pass a certain number of glöps.. First pcdc will unlock at 64, second at 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192..

:: general :: i don't understand half of your internal jokes! where did all these memes come from?

Things keep changing and we can't always follow up with everything. The BBS is generally a more up-to-date source of information.

:: general :: What is a "sneaky CDC"?

a sneaky CDC means someone placed a personal coup de coeur on a certain prod without posting a comment on it yet.

:: general :: do pouët admins go upstairs?

not since the accident.

:: general :: you can get banned from pouet now?!?

yes, you can. we got sick of all the trolls and attentionwhores. so if you indulge into constant offensive, spamming, flooding, insulting, illegal, racist or otherwise socially inapt behaviour you will get thrown out of our sandbox. just try not to piss off 90% of our active users.

:: general :: Why is the site called Pouet?

[17:25:09] <rez_> analogue didn't have any idea of domain name for the site, and since i was saying "pouet" everytime when i joined irc he registered the domain name :)

("Pouet" is the French onomatopoeia for the trumpet sound. It is pronounced the way it's written.)

:: general :: Why do some people get glöps for "United Devices contribution"?

United Devices was a distributed computing cancer reasearch project that ran from 2001 to 2007. The people who contributed clock cycles were allowed to form teams, and Analogue decided it would be a nice idea to encourage people to take part in the project by creating a Pouet.net team and honoring the UD/grid.org points earned by sceners with glöps. Sceners eventually contributed over 100 years of CPU time to the project until its shutting down in 2007, and the glöps remain as an all-time bonus.

:: general :: What is a "glöp"?

"Glöp" is a term relating to the French comic book Pifou, where the main character only says either "glop" or "pas glop!" ("not glop!") depending on the situation.

In the Pouet context, a "glöp" is basically a metric of activity on the site - sceners who contribute a lot to the site get more glöps!

:: general :: I want to add a prod to pouët but the file is on my computer! how do I upload it?

Untergrund offers fast, reliable hosting for scene-related projects. Applications are dealt with on a case-by-case basis though so don't bother asking space for a warez FTP.

Be warned however: anything involving one-click hosts like Rapidshare or Mediafire will be deleted - noone wants to watch ads before getting a download link. Web-based hosting services like Dropbox and Google Drive are tolerated as long as they deliver the file immediately without intermediate clicks.

:: general :: Why does some punctuation on the site have a space before it ?

Because that's how French people do it and we kept it because it looked unique. We're not entirely consistent with it though, so zomg.

:: general :: Which extra links are acceptable and how should I name them ?

Clicking on a direct to file link should lead to a file, not online streaming service. Also, there should be no "download page", clicking must start download immediately.

The short version is "yes" - after all it's just one vote and the author of the prod also has the right to have an opinion of their own production. That being said it's a contentious issue because a lot of people think it's self-promotion or "trying to game the system" - some going as far as "counter-voting" the author's vote - so it's generally advised against.

:: general :: what principles do you moderate the site with ?

Over the years, Pouët has become a central hub for people who make up the
demoscene, with a variety of different personalities contributing to the discussions
every day. By definition, we're aware that this can get messy and that the scene
has its considerable share of controversial opinions, so here's a rough little
outline about how you should optimally deal with conflicts on the site. (Note that
these are merely guidelines by no means set in stone, and in all cases, admins and
moderators will arbitrate.)

Respect the origins of the site

Pouët is, above all else, a demoscene site, and should be treated as such.
This doesn't mean offtopic discussions aren't welcome, but as with
everything, they only work in moderation before they start diluting the
site's core idea.

No spam. Plain and simple, Pouët is not an advertising platform, whether
you're posting with a bot or naively thinking that people are interested in
the new product you want to sell. That's not to say you can't let
people know about something you made: If you're a well-respected scener and
you made something that you think could be interesting to the rest of the
community, it's up to them to decide if they tolerate it, but anything else
will be terminated with extreme prejudice.

No illegal content. Not only did the scene stop caring about illegal activity
way before the age of the Internet, but also we'd very much like to keep this
hosting and not jeopardize it by inviting it to be hit with whatever
cease-and-desist mechanism is popular today. Any such links will be removed.

When discussing, please stick to English. There's a lot of zany
Francophone stuff going on at Pouët, but that's merely decoration around
the core language of the site, which is English. When having a discussion, allow
the rest of the site to get involved by using a language everyone can use.

Be civil

Disagreeing is perfectly fine, and you shouldn't take any of it
personally. Just because someone thinks that you're wrong doesn't
undermine the core principle of your being, and changing your mind about something
is free. Additionally, if you still think you are right, maybe you've just
made your point wrong; a calm and well-mannered explanation can work miracles.

Respect the human behind the prod/post. Every demo or post on Pouët is made by human
beings, so please do treat them as such, and avoid reverting to ad hominem attacks
because of disagreements. Character-assassination never resulted in good
things.

You don't have to take part in every discussion. There are some subjects
that are not interesting to you, but that doesn't give you the right to make
sure that those discussions cannot be had. If you don't like a subject
matter, ignore it, go watch a demo instead.

Don't swim upstream

If multiple people tell you to stop, stop. Everyone can think they're the
only person who's right and everyone else is wrong, but unless you can prove
your point solidly, it's probably better to just leave it be.

The goal was to shame people who commented a production without putting a clear binary judgement. Circa 2000, when the site was born, anal0gue thought crystal clear opinions (like/dislike) were easier to process, and would trigger more conversations ("Why U hate what I love!?"). As it stands now, the pig stuck but it's perfectly okay to vote neutrally.

:: pouet 2.0

:: pouet 2.0 :: what are the little green dots next to the name?

It means that the user is (probably) online and browsing on the site. No guarantees though, it just shows that a user was recently active.

:: pouet 2.0 :: How does the autocomplete work? I think I entered the right name but it didn't appear?

Simply entering a name you want to select isn't enough, you have to click (or use the keyboard) on it too!

:: pouet 2.0 :: I found a bug and I think it's an easy fix - can I help?

The watchlist keeps track of prods you care about, and lists the latest related comments for them in a convenient little box on the front page. Just click the icon on the prod's page to add it to your list (or click again to remove it).

:: pouet 2.0 :: my prod is marked to have a broken link, what's up with that ?

pouët now has a little background task that runs every so often to check if download links are healthy or not. if it can't download a link at a given time, it will mark it as broken - this can be for a number of reasons:

the link is really broken: no comment about this - if you have a working replacement link, submit an edit request.

the link works now but was broken when the script checked: this happens every so often, due to e.g. your server maintenance; because of the volume of the prods, every prod gets checked once in only about two weeks. you can either wait for it to be checked again or ask an admin nicely to ping the link again.

the link works for most people, but our script is blocked: this usually happens because your link is some sort of redirect that filters e.g. non-browser user-agents. if this is the case, we will consider your link broken because you shouldn't be doing that.

(tip: you can mouse over the "broken link" text to see what the problem was.)

in general, you should only post links that adhere to the single-click-download rule (files.scene.org being the exception), at hosts that are reliable and sustainable.

:: syndication

:: syndication :: How to use some pouet.net data on my website/bot/application ?

You can display data from pouet.net on your site using RSS and XNFO files. The files offered use commonly know open formats and are generated live.

This feed exports the latest productions added to the pouet.net database.

Arguments :

platform - specify the platform of productions to display.
type - specify the type of productions to display.
group - specify the group of productions to display.
howmany (1 to 100) (default = 10) - specify the number of productions to display.

This feed exports the latest productions released in the pouet.net database.

Arguments :

platform - specify the platform of productions to display.
type - specify the type of productions to display.
group - specify the group of productions to display.
howmany (1 to 100) (default = 10) - specify the number of productions to display.

If you'd like pouet.net to export those feeds in any other format (even a custom one) or you'd like to get some other data, feel free to send me a request about it at webmaster@pouet.net. Also, do not hesitate to tell me about your uses of the feeds, I'd be glad to link back your implementations =)

:: BB Code

:: BB Code :: URL Hyperlinking

If BBCode is enabled in a forum, you no longer need to use the [URL] code to create a hyperlink. Simply type the complete URL in either of the following manners and the hyperlink will be created automatically:

http://www.yourURL.com

www.yourURL.com

Notice that you can either use the complete http:// address or shorten it to the www domain. If the site does not begin with "www", you must use the complete "http://" address. Also, you may use https and ftp URL prefixes in auto-link mode (when BBCode is ON).

The old [URL] code will still work, as detailed below.
Just encase the link as shown in the following example (BBCode is in red).

[url]www.totalgeek.org[/url]

You can also have true hyperlinks using the [url] code. Just use the following format:

[url=http://www.totalgeek.org]totalgeek.org[/url]

In the examples above, the BBCode automatically generates a hyperlink to the URL that is encased. It will also ensure that the link is opened in a new window when the user clicks on it. Note that the "http://" part of the URL is completely optional. In the second example above, the URL will hypelink the text to whatever URL you provide after the equal sign. Also note that you should NOT use quotation marks inside the URL tag.

:: BB Code :: Email Links

To add a hyperlinked email address within your message, just encase the email address as shown in the following example (BBCode is in red).

[email]james@totalgeek.org[/email]

In the example above, the BBCode automatically generates a hyperlink to the email address that is encased.

:: BB Code :: Bold and Italics

You can make italicized text or make text bold by encasing the applicable sections of your text with either the [b] [/b] or [i] [/i] tags.

Hello, [b]James[/b]
Hello, [i]Mary[/i]

:: BB Code :: Bullets/Lists

You can make bulleted lists or ordered lists (by number or letter).

Unordered, bulleted list:

[list][*] This is the first bulleted item.[*] This is the second bulleted item.[/list]

This produces:

This is the first bulleted item.

This is the second bulleted item.

Note that you must include a closing [/list] when you end each list.

Making ordered lists is just as easy. Just add either [LIST=A] or [LIST=1]. Typing [List=A] will produce a list from A to Z. Using [List=1] will produce numbered lists.

Here's an example:

[list=A][*] This is the first bulleted item.[*] This is the second bulleted item.[/list]

This produces:

This is the first bulleted item.

This is the second bulleted item.

:: BB Code :: Adding Images

To add a graphic within your message, just encase the URL of the graphic image as shown in the following example (BBCode is in red).

[img]http://www.totalgeek.org/images/tline.gif[/img]

In the example above, the BBCode automatically makes the graphic visible in your message. Note: the "http://" part of the URL is REQUIRED for the [img] code.

:: BB Code :: Quoting Other Messages

To reference something specific that someone has posted, just cut and paste the applicable verbiage and enclose it as shown below (BBCode is in red).

[quote]Ask not what your country can do for you....ask what you can do for your country.[/quote]

In the example above, the BBCode automatically blockquotes the text you reference.

:: BB Code :: Code Tag

Similar to the Quote tag, the Code tag adds some <PRE> tags to preserve formatting. This useful for displaying programming code, for instance.

[code]#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello World!";
[/code]

In the example above, the BBCode automatically blockquotes the text you reference and preserves the formatting of the coded text.